I look at the roadside and see good grazing, at a fallen tree and see a jump. My phone autodials the farrier and my Mini hauls feed, so naturally my blog is about horses.

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An epic journey

Thanksgiving in the San Juans allowed my husband and I to see some old friends – Pan Tau, Guli, Pika, Shazada and the rest of the Sweetwater Farms herd, as well as Amrita, Jay and Sam Ibold. We received caresses from the fillies and scritched chests and withers in return, and then feasted on salmon caught locally by Jay and gumbo brought by the other guests, San Juan Island sculptor Micajah Bienvenu and his wife Amy.

The next day Amrita and I pored through her Akhal-Teke archives. The historic images of bearded men in traditional telpeks were miles apart from the long-haired women presenting their horses at this year’s Ising — bud add a blush of color to the older photos and the horses appear unchanged.

It was well into the evening when we boarded the ferry back from Friday Harbor, even the twinkle of lights blocked by low cloud, so I buried my nose in the book Amrita Ibold had given me – The Divine Akhalteke Horse, by Charly Shirliyev. I was soon engrossed in another journey.

If you have read even the most cursory description of Akhal-Teke breed, you know of the great Ashgebat to Moscow race held in 1935. It was an event designed to promote the strength and endurance of the desert breeds of Turkmenistan, the Akhal-Teke and the Yomud. It was called a race, but the real battle was to prove the worth of the purebred as a military mount, able to endure a forced march across the vast distances of Soviet territories.

So if a 4300 kilometers (2,671 miles) journey over scorching deserts, stony mountains and soggy forests in 84 days sounds harsh, it was intended as a test, not torture — a way for the 30 stallions to show that their stamina was as great as tradition said. Fit and mature horses where chosen for this task, all stallions. In Turkmenistan, where gelding was not customary, mares were kept for breeding rather than riding.

Beginnings

The journey that began with a cheery sendoff on a sunny May morning soon encountered the first difficulty. 5 days into the journey, on June 4th, the horses and riders arrived in Oguz, where they found wells destroyed by the local populace as they fled from attackers in the recent civil war. What little water they could find had a strange taste and the horses refused to drink it. “The men are depressed, and the horses too,” a diary entry noted.

The Karakum Desert

The next day they began the hardest leg of the journey, across the Karakum desert, following a native guide, Nepes Karahan. Sandstorms whipped up a caustic dust, and at the sulphur factory where they stopped, the horses refused the salty water and had to be forced to drink by pouring it down their noses. They covered the horses with sheets to protect them from the sun, but the sand itself was burning hot and radiated heat upwards. The riders marveled at their horses’ ability to keep going through the deep sand.

By the 11th, when the reached the cotton farms of Oguz, they truly appreciated the value of fresh water on the 12th, they were swimming in a pond by sm apricot orchard.

Into the Steppes

The horses were shod for the next section, some with leather pads. With the presence of water all around them, there was another problem – horse flies. They bit indiscriminately – horse or man – wherever they smelled blood. “We covered the horses in special coveralls and armed ourselves with branches and fought them off as best we could. On June 18th, they encountered another shortage – the column of vehicles that transported water and food for the horses and riders ran out of gas and they had to stop for 4 days. By June 24th, they were covering barren land again, without even the saksaul of the Karakum desert to boil water for tea, and encountering daytime temperature sof 40 degree celsius.

They moved swiftly and steadily for the next five days, covering 500 kilometers without a rest day, but the horses remained steadfast and in good condition — only one horse developed a cough. Only a few more days and they would be in Temir.
The Kazakh Steppes

A downpour greeted them, accompanied by chilly gusts of wind, a dramatic change from the desert conditions. They were 36 hours ahead of schedule, but they would need this extra time to load up supplies to cover the sparsely populated section ahead of them. Where ever they rode, though, word would travel ahead, and they would be greeted. In Aktubinsk they were welcomed with kumys [fermented mares' milk] and beshbarmak [a stew of lamb and liver that can also include horse meat] with pilaf laid out on Turkmen carpets.

While they certainly appreciated the Kazakh hospitality, is seems to have awakened homesickness. After 45 days on the road, a diary entry notes “Before going to sleep riders played dutars [the traditional stringed instrument of Turkmenistan]. One could see that people were missing their Motherland.”

The riders soon had their mind on the here and now – three days of rain turned ditches into rivers and soaked horwes and riders to the bone. By the time they came to Kuybyshev they were ready for a break. A curious crowd gathered to see the horses, and after telling tales of Akhal Teke greats like Arab, the men took the chance to get airplane rides or rowboats.

The next week they passed through a region where signs on black poles warned of dangerous disease in the villages. Local vets came out to warn them, and they hurried on towards Kuznetsk. They had company on the road. Riders from a nearby stud farm came out to greet them, mounted on Orlovs, curious to see the famous Akhal-Teke breed.

Onwards towards Moscow

With the worst of the hazards seemingly behind them, the horses now showed the first signs of real hardship. Two became ill on August 8th, perhaps because of the changing forage. “The veterinarian did not sleep all night because he was watching our horses with great concern.” A diary entry notes.

The riders were in more populated areas now, and they paused frequently in towns to accept the welcome of local dignitaries and to give and hear speeches. Food, feed and water are no longer scarce, there are stables for the horses and all are in good shape. Every day, the diary mentions their excellent mood, Planes flew overhead, and a paratrooper descended in Ryazan to greed them. The horses have had to acclimate to the storm of bouquets tossed at them in the street as they ride in military formation. It’s a long way from the sandblasting they endured in the early stages.

On August 22nd, they passed through Luberets towards Moscow. Where a cavalry squadron and 500 cyclists greet them. The air force put on a show too, following overhead as they advanced towards Red Square through streets lined with signs, flags and flowers. The horses were objects of fascination, and people crowded around to touch them.

Heritage of the Great Ride

The stallions did not return to Turkmenistan with their riders. They were intented to remain in Russia as their riders return by train, laden with the Order of the Red Star and Russian shotguns, while the farms that bred them were given a truck by the Soviet state. However, those were just small tokens compared to the huge impact this journey had on the fate of the Akhal-Teke breed and one horse in particular who brought it to international attention.

One of the stallions who completed the ride was the grey Arab. He was only 5 when he made the ride, and in Moscow was presented to Marshal Seminov Budenney (the cavalry officer who founded the chestnut Budenny breed). Budenny donated him to the cavalry school, where he competed and made parade appearances. At 19, then pure white, he was retired to study in Kazahkstan, where he sired a black colt from an Akhal Teke mare, Baccara.

That colt was Absent, perhaps the best known Teke in the Western world when he and Sergei Filatov won the Individual Gold Medal at the 1968 Olympics.

The ride left its mark in Turkmenistan, too – the riders became heroes amongst the horsemen of their homeland, and in turn inspired another ride in 1988 — but if you want to know about that, you’ll have to read the book yourself – or find one of the riders.

The Divine Akhalteke Horse is available through Amrita’s website. It’s in three languages, Turkmen, Russian and English, so it’s a weighty tome, but it is full of pictures you won’t see elsewhere. It was published in 2003, under the rule of Saparmyrat Niyazov, the eccentric dictator of Turkmenistan. He adopted the Akhal Teke as a symbol of the country and his personal power, even putting it on the flag. Perhaps that’s the reason some things are omitted from the book and the style is quite flowery in places. However, it contains the stories of the great rides, historical images and history of the horse from a non-Western perspective, picture pedigrees of the different sire lines and biographies of breeders. If you want to delve into the past of the Akhal Teke, you’ll relish all of it.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..